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Whether it’s a protein, breakfast, or granola bar, more than ever are bars serving as snacks or even convenient meal replacements as the on the go lifestyle continues to take hold. Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it. From this example, it can be seen that millennials want grab-and-go meal options to match their fast-paced lifestyles.

From a business standpoint, the bar category has some of the highest prices per unit in retail stores, opening up larger profit possibilities.

Our Gum Gurus® often field questions about using stabilizers and thickening systems to make an ideal nutritional, granola, or cereal bar. Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about bar formulations:

What gum should I use for a binding syrup?

In product development, one main goal for a snack or meal bar is to keep all of the ingredients bound together. In many bars a general binder is needed, while in granola bars specifically, the film forming ability of a binding system is the key to cohesiveness and stability through processing and transit. For most granola bars, we recommend our Add-Here® line, a proprietary line of hydrocolloids that replaces the texture and binding qualities needed in bars, but with significantly less sugar in addition to other functional benefits. TIC Pretested® Gum Arabic FT is also suitable for creating binding syrups.

How should I incorporate the gums into my product?

Because sugar can compete with the gums for water in the mixing tank, it’s often helpful to disperse the gum in the tank and allow it to hydrate before adding sugar.

After the mixture is heated to boiling, while still hot, the binding syrup should be mixed into the dry ingredients and the bars should be allowed to cool in their desired shapes. Most of our hydrocolloid systems will work well in both chewy and crunchy granola bars. The major difference between the two is that crunchy bars will be put through a baking step, as opposed to chewy bars that must instead go through a drying step.

I am formulating a reduced sugar granola bar. What textural properties are important, and what binding options do I have?

Replacing sweetness can be accomplished with high-intensity sweeteners like aspartame or stevia but what is not easy to replace is the texture, stability, gloss, stickiness, and film forming attributes sugar provides and that are necessary to form and hold separate ingredients together. Dissolved sugar provides these because it can dry into a solid, and these solid properties are what bind the parts of the dry ingredients together.

In reduced sugar bars, TIC Gums’ Texture Terminology attributes that are important to monitor and maintain include, but are not limited to:

Awareness of Particulates

Fracturability

Moisture Absorption

Noise

Surface Roughness

Texture Attributes of Cereal Bars

Texture Terminology

Definitions

Examples

Awareness of Particulates

The amount of particles (grit, grainy, seeds, skins) perceived in the mass

Chocolate truffle center vs chewy granola bar with chocolate chips

Fracturability

The force with which the sample ruptures when placing the sample between the molars and biting down at an even rate

Corn muffin vs hard boiled (glass) candy

Moisture Absorption

Amount of saliva absorbed by sample during chew down perceived as the degree of change in mouth moistness

Shoe string licorice vs pound cake

Noise

The loudness of the sample during chewdown

Sliced white bread vs tortilla chips

Surface Roughness

The amount of particles perceived in the surface

Water dessert gel vs thin crisp rye wafer

The following products were developed specifically for reduced sugar systems:

Add-Here 3200

Pre-Hydrated Gum Arabic FT

Do you have stabilizers that meet the definitions for all-natural, organic, and/or Non-GMO?

Top factors for consumers choosing a bar to buy are often focused on label claims including natural, organic or non-GMO. According to Innova Market Insights, the number of cereal and energy bars launched in the US bearing a clean label claim has dramatically increased in the last 5 years with 50% of those launches now bearing a GMO-free claim. Also notable is the drop in launches bearing a natural claim.

In the absence of definitions or standards for some claims, our Gum Gurus can work closely with you to select a gum system that meets your labeling requirements.

Add-Here 3200 Non-GMO

Add-Here 4300 P: An all-natural* alternative to Add-Here 3200 that does not contain cellulose gum

TICorganic® Gum Arabic SF: A certified organic gum acacia that can be used to replace corn syrup as a binder

My bars are drying out. What can I do to retain moisture in my bar?

The softness in a chewy granola bar is often a function of the moisture retention properties of the bar; the more moisture that is retained, the softer the bar will be. To aid in moisture retention, we recommend that you blend our dry mixtures into the dry ingredients before mixing into the syrup.

Sheilah Kast from WYPR's On The Record radio show interviewed Tim Andon, senior technical service manager, and Whitney LaRoche, a past participant, about our Ice Cream University program for high school students. Click here to listen to the show

TRANSCRIPT

SHEILAH KAST: We’re on the record.

Ever imagined creating your own ice cream flavor? What would it be?

Creamy caramel or maybe simple vanilla? What would you add? Ribbons of raspberry jam? Crunchy pecans? Dark chocolate truffles? How about all three?

Designing an ice cream flavor requires both balance and a sweet tooth. Marketing that flavor requires a whole other set of skills. Take coffee, for example, that flavor would most likely appeal to adults while bubble gum or cotton candy confections are more kid friendly options.

This is the kind of inside scoop Harford County High School students learn when they take part in something called Ice Cream University at TIC Gums in White Marsh and joining me to tell us more about the making and marketing of ice cream is Tim Andon, business development manager for TIC Gums which manufactures ingredients that improve the texture and stability of foods for the food and beverage industry. Tim Andon, welcome to On the Record.

TIM ANDON: Thanks, Sheilah, it’s good to be here.

KAST: Ice Cream University is run in association with Cornell University and based on their food science 101 course. Tell us about Ice Cream University.

ANDON: As a Cornell University food science graduate myself, all of the freshmen that attend the program there basically are given an introductory course in food science that walks them through the commercialization of an ice cream flavor. It’s meant to be a really nice teaser for freshmen who are often taking chemistry courses, biology courses, a lot of prerequisites but this serves as an entrée into some of the more exciting parts of product development for those students.

KAST: So that’s the 101 course at Cornell, now you’ve taken that somehow and made it into a kind of weekend spring learning experience for high school kids from Harford County. Tell us about that.

ANDON: Exactly, we really try to pare down to get the most important parts of that class. Obviously, it’s an entire semester at the college level but we’ve really tried to pare that down and translate that into a five weekend session for high school students to really try to increase their interest in food science as a potential field of study. Even when I was at Cornell which has one of the highest ranked food science programs in the nation, I would tell people “Oh, I’m a food scientist” and a lot of kids at the university wouldn’t even know we had that. They think you’re a nutritionist or a dietician or something like this. Really it’s everything between the process of food that comes from a farm and how it gets to our tables

KAST: So that’s a lot of boiling down to get that into 5 weekends. How do you start Ice Cream University?

ANDON: It is a challenge but really we’re trying to give students a taste of entrepreneurialism, a taste of how to not only design a really good ice cream flavor but how you go about marketing that.

One of the things that we found, we’re now in our fifth year of the class, a lot of these high school students maybe hadn’t necessarily had the opportunity to present in front of not only adults but their peers and Industry experts. We have professors that come down from Cornell and teach a class about how their actual dairy manufacturing plant is run and we’ll teach them about these kinds of things but it’s really an opportunity for the kids to follow an idea from its creation stage. Every week they’re trying out new flavors at the end of the class. Experimenting with different combinations. How much flavor they need to put into the specific ice cream they’re making and then they go through and try to develop a marketing plan. Very much like you said at the beginning of the show where if they’re going to be making some sort of bubble gum style flavor their marketing plan really needs to be targeted towards kids or it’s not going to make any sense. We really try to teach the kids about the idea creation process and then how you go about pitching that to a larger audience pretty much like Shark Tank for ice cream.

KAST: What do students learn about items added into an ice cream? Candy, chocolate

ANDON: This is one of the more enlightening parts of the class. A lot of people think you can take normal nuts, inclusions is the technical term, and you can just put them into frozen ice creams and eat them. But a lot of these ingredients have been specifically designed in order to function well and not break any teeth at those really low temperatures so we talk to them about freezing point depression and how that makes things like chewy caramel that you see in ice cream to actually make it chewy and not rock solid.

KAST: What about preventing freezer burn?

ANDON: That’s one of the things the ingredients that TIC Gums supplies will actually help to control and address. Obviously nobody’s going to describe ice cream that they like as being gritty or grainy or having freezer burn. Things like gum…they come from natural sources like seeds or tree saps. They help to bind up that extra water that would otherwise show up as freezer burn if it’s left in the freezer for too long.

KAST: You’ve talked about students being exposed to professors who can walk them through a marketing campaign. Part of Ice Cream University is a competition. The kids form teams and design their own flavor and then present that idea to judges.

ANDON: Definitely usually there’s anywhere between four or five teams and depending on the number of students in the class. But, yes, it’s very much a friendly competition because at the end the winning flavor is actually then produced at Broom's Bloom Dairy up in Harford County so that students not only get to you know have the enjoyment of having won one of the things that I think is actually a lot of fun for both parents and students is actually going to a real creamery and seeing their actual ice cream flavor be produced, being able to taste it, and being able to brag to all their friends and family members that this was something that they actually designed.

Videos in the Common Issues with RTD Beverages Series

Transcript

After years of reduced fat efforts, an ever increasing challenge for manufacturers of Ready-to-drink beverages has been the inclusion of fat and other healthy oils. An increasing number of teas, coffees and similar beverages are including ingredients like MCT oil, vegetable oils or butter fat to develop new, never-before-seen beverages.

While consumers enjoy these new trends and innovations, product developers are struggling with the stress that these ingredients place on the stability of the beverage; specifically when it comes to emulsification.

Emulsification refers to the successful mixing of multiple (normally unmixable) ingredients together. Soda, ice cream and salad dressing are emulsion examples that we enjoy every day. And with RTD beverages in particular, emulsification is vital for both stability and a successful shelf-life.

So to achieve the required stability, product developers need an emulsifier. But, a single ingredient emulsifier will likely do little to maintain the appropriate texture. That’s where a gum system comes in to play.

A gum system can help address multiple beverage concerns at the same time. Our systems are blends of multiple gums which work in tandem to address issues like emulsification and texture.

For example, Ticaloid Pro 181 AG is a gum system that emulsifies and modifies the texture in RTD beverages. When used in dairy-alternative beverages (like almond-milk), the system will emulsify the residual oils from the almonds while enhancing mouthfeel providing consumers with their preferred drinking experience.

Ticaloid Pro 192 AGD provides stability for dairy-based beverages, even when they include high protein and healthy fats. Despite increased levels of these ingredients, this gum system prevents separation and decreases awareness of particulates.

Instant Beverages on the Rise

With consumers busier than ever, there is a continued need for solutions that can be taken on the go and enjoyed over a longer period of time. In addition to convenience, consumers are also seeking products that align with the health and wellness trends that continue to penetrate the instant beverage category. Subsequently, product developers are challenged with creating innovative, clean label instant beverages that maximize nutritional value without negatively impacting sensory attributes. With a product that must abide by common clean-label guidelines, as well as deliver on consumer texture and flavor expectations, challenges do arise. One particular challenge when working with an instant beverage is producing a consistent and optimal hydration rate.

What do you mean by hydration rate?

Hydration rate is described as the rate by which an instant beverage powder hydrates when moistened and the optimal consistency the beverage maintains. An ideal hydration rate would feature a beverage that hydrates quickly and remains at a consistent viscosity so it can be consumed immediately or over a longer period of time, if desired. Conversely, a beverage that suffers from less than ideal hydration rate may continue to hydrate as the beverage sits. Creating a thick, undesirable texture for the consumer.

Hydration rate in action

In order to see the true and real-time effects that hydration rate has on instant beverages, TIC Gums created an instant chocolate protein beverage formulation to compare the textural benefits of Ticaloid® Ultrasmooth CL to xanthan gum alone. The video below shows the formulations with Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL and xanthan gum alone during different points of hydration: 30 seconds and 20 minutes. It is easiest to see the difference between the two solutions by taking a look at the amount of residue that is left on the spoon after 30 seconds and 20 minutes respectively. The solution with xanthan gum alone shows that over time, the product continues to hydrate past the 10 minute mark and becomes more viscous compared to the solution with Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL.

How can Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL help with my instant protein beverage?

Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL from TIC Gums is a hydrocolloid system that enhances texture and suspension in instant protein beverage applications. This clean label, cold water soluble system dissolves easily into a solution allowing consumers to experience the textural benefits upon reconstitution.

What other benefits does Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL have to offer?

Fortified instant beverages have an increased amount of perceivable particulates due to the addition of vitamin-mineral blends, fiber, protein and other nutritional ingredients. These ingredients, especially the protein selection, can also increase the astringency of the beverage. As a result, the textural properties of the finished beverage are impacted. To target texture in these protein beverages, product developers can leverage the benefits found in hydrocolloid systems.

TIC Gums used the instant chocolate protein beverage to test the textural benefits of Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL with six trained descriptive analysis panelists. While the sample with xanthan and the sample with Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL both provide viscosity and suspension, the sample with Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL masked the awareness of particulates in a way xanthan alone was not able to, avoiding an undesirable, gritty mouthfeel and dispersed in liquid more easily than the alternative samples, while exhibiting the highest hydration rate.

Texture Attributes of Instant Protein Beverages

Texture Terminology

Definitions

Typically Associated Consumer Terms

Viscosity [Initial]

Rate of flow per unit force: the force to draw between lips from spoon, and the rate of flow across tongue

Thickness

Slipperiness [Manipulation]

Ease to slide product over lips

Slickness or sleekness

Astringency [Chemical]

The feeling on the tongue or other skin surfaces of the oral cavity described as puckering/dry and associated with tannins or alum

Mouth drying associated with products such as strong brewed tea

Awareness of Particulates [Breakdown]

Amount of grainy, gritty, or lumpy particles or other inclusions in the mass

Not smooth, gritty or grainy

Mouth Clearing

The speed with which the sample clears from the mouth after swallowing or expectorating

Easy to swallow

What other benefits does Ticaloid Ultrasmooth CL have to offer?

Fortified instant beverages have an increased amount of perceivable particulates due to the addition of vitamin-mineral blends, fiber, protein and other nutritional ingredients. These ingredients, especially the protein selection, can also increase the astringency of the beverage. As a result, the textural properties of the finished beverage are impacted. To target texture in these protein beverages, product developers can leverage the benefits found in hydrocolloid systems.